Хеннинг Манкелль - A Treacherous Paradise

1,935 metres. Her husband was going to have a much deeper grave than the deepest grave on land. It would take almost thirty minutes for the dead body to reach the bottom. Halvorsen had told her that objects sink very slowly at great depths.

The sea burial was over, the crew returned to their work. Only a few minutes later there was a clattering noise in the engine room. The ship was moving again, the interval was over.

Hanna remained standing by the rail. There was no longer anything to be seen in the water. She turned away and went straight to the galley where the mess-room boy had begun preparing lunch. She put on her apron — and then discovered that a deckhand had been sent to help out in the kitchen.

‘Even though my husband is dead, I shall do my job,’ she said.

She didn’t wait for a reply but climbed down the ladder to the storeroom to fetch the potatoes that needed to be boiled for the meals that still remained to be served that day.

The potatoes were duly peeled. She emptied the buckets of peel overboard and went back into the galley. Halvorsen was busy repairing a cupboard with racks for saucepans and frying pans. Her husband’s best friend on board. He has also lost a companion, she thought. He’s also wondering why the third mate took it into his head to go ashore on that unhappy occasion.

She continued her work with the mess-room boy and the deckhand. But when Halvorsen had finished what he was doing he tapped her on the shoulder and beckoned her to follow him out. She asked the mess-room boy to keep an eye on her saucepans, and followed after him.

He was looking down at the deck when he spoke to her, never looked her in the eye.

‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked.

That was a question she’d had neither the strength nor the courage to ask herself. What could she do? What choice did she have?

She was honest with him, and said she didn’t know.

‘I’ll help you,’ he said. ‘Just so that you know. If I can.’

Halvorsen didn’t wait for a response, but turned on his heel and headed towards the bows. She thought about what he had said. And gathered that her husband had asked him to help her in his desperation when he realized how ill he was.

It was Lundmark speaking with Halvorsen’s voice. A voice from the deep. A voice that was very good at imitating others.

They berthed in an African town by the name of Lourenço Marques. The town was small and sparsely populated, reminiscent of Algiers perhaps, with white-fronted houses climbing up a slope. At the top of the hill was a white hotel. The name of the town was impossible to pronounce, so the crew called it Loco — a word she recognized from her Portuguese dictionary, meaning ‘mad’.

Halvorsen had been there before. He urged Hanna not to sleep with the porthole open as there were mosquitoes that carried the dreaded malaria. And she should never wear anything with short sleeves, even though the evenings were warm.

He offered to go ashore with her. They could go for a walk through the town, perhaps stop at one of the countless small restaurants and eat the grilled fish, the prawns deep-fried in oil, or the lobster that was the best in the world.

But she declined. She wasn’t yet ready to go anywhere with another man, even if Halvorsen had the best of intentions. She remained on board and thought about the fact that in two days’ time they would set sail due east over the big ocean that separated the African continent from Australia.

One night as they were lying in their cramped bunk, whispering, Lundmark had told her that sometimes ships heading for Australia came across icebergs. Although they were sailing on warm seas, some of these icebergs — as big as palaces built of marble — could drift a long way north before they were completely melted by the heat. Captain Svartman had told him that, and everything Captain Svartman said was true.

She stood by the ship’s rail, watching African porters dressed in rags carrying provisions on board supervised by Captain Svartman. A white man, bearded and tanned, wearing a khaki suit, was in charge of the porters. It seemed to Hanna that the movements of his hands gave the impression that he was lashing their shoulders with an invisible whip. The porters were thin, frightened. Now and again she would meet their scared, shifty eyes.

Sometimes she thought she could also see something different: fury, perhaps hatred. But she couldn’t be sure.

The white man’s voice was shrill, as if he hated what he was doing, or just wanted it to come to an end as quickly as possible.

Sometimes when the gangplank was not being used she thought that despite everything she might cross over it, and set foot on the African continent one more time.

But she never did. The rail continued to be her unsurmountable border.

The first night she lay awake in the heat. Halvorsen had said that she could leave the porthole open as long as she covered it carefully with a thin cotton cloth. He had given her a piece of suitable material that he had bought for her while he was ashore.

Now she lay there in the dark, listening to the cicadas, and beyond them occasional drumbeats and something that might have been a song, or perhaps the cry of a nocturnal bird.

The static heat was so stifling that she got dressed and went out on deck. A sailor was guarding the gangplank, which was blocked at night by a thick rope. She went forward to the bows of the ship and sat down on a capstan.

All around her the ship was in darkness, apart from the hurricane lamp by the gangplank. A fire was burning down below on the quay. Men were sitting around it, their faces lit up by the flames. She shuddered. She didn’t know why. Perhaps she was afraid, perhaps it was all the unaddressed sorrow that had been accumulating inside her.

She remained sitting on the capstan until she fell asleep. She woke up when she felt a mosquito biting her hand. She brushed it away, and thought that it wouldn’t matter anyway if she died.

The following day, the last one they would be spending in Lourenço Marques, she asked Halvorsen what the country they were in was called.

‘Portuguese East Africa,’ he said somewhat doubtfully. ‘If that can really be the name of an African country.’

He shook his head and pulled a face.

‘Slavery,’ he said. ‘The blacks are slaves. No more than that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many brutal people as I’ve seen here. And they are all white, like you and me.’

He shook his head again, and left her.

She had seen his disgust. Just as she had seen in the eyes of some of the black men their fury, and perhaps also a feeling similar to Halvorsen’s.

It was during that same day that the Swedish missionaries came on board the ship. Captain Svartman met them by the gangplank shortly before eleven o’clock in the morning. The women in long skirts and white safari helmets, and a small fat man with a club foot came on board. Hanna stopped what she was doing and watched the strangers. Captain Svartman handed them a suitcase full of post, then invited them into his cabin.

Halvorsen had told her that they had a mission station inland at a place called Phalaborwa. It was a long way from the coast. They must have been travelling by ox cart for over a week before arriving in Lourenço Marques.

‘Captain Svartman no doubt sent them a telegram when we were docked in Algiers,’ said Halvorsen. ‘So they would know roughly when we were due to arrive.’

Hanna had been doing some laundry and was about to hang it up to dry on one of the lines the deckhands rigged up for her whenever it was needed, but suddenly she discovered that one of the unknown women was standing in front of her.